'Quartet': Dustin Hoffman, Behind The Camera
In December, the actor Dustin Hoffman sat in a box seat at the Kennedy Center as his old friend, Robert De Niro, saluted him at a celebration marking one of the highest accolades for an artist in the United States: a Kennedy Center Honor.
It was a recognition of Hoffman's decades-long career as an actor, during which he has played some of the silver screen's most memorable characters: Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie, Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man, Carl Bernstein in All The President's Men. And the list goes on.
Now, at age 75, Hoffman has added "director" to his resume. His directorial debut, Quartet, opens in wide release on Jan. 25. The film, which stars Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly, tells the story of a quartet of aging opera singers who put on a concert in honor of Verdi's birthday at the retirement home where they live.
The film explores the lives of older artists — the way memory wanes and the high notes may recede into the distance — and Hoffman says the point is to remember the value of those memories, the friendships and the time remaining.
"If we can put on the screen those feelings we have, the ups the downs," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "that's what I'm looking for."